Friday, 29 April 2016

Geek Rant versus the Riverboat Pilot

IOWA

As
anyone who read my last post, of whom I humbly hope their number is
not few, will remember, I wrote about mine and my wives travels in
the backwoods, the highways and byways and small towns of America's
Mid-west. Predominantly I talked about our visit to Galena, Illinois,
but that was not the only town that we spent significant time in that
weekend.

Ever
since I started “courting” my lovely wife and first visited this
country I now call home, we have engaged in a tradition of sending a
fridge magnet of every state we visit back to my mother as a gift. My
father instead receives chocolate mints (which he loves), hats (a
Minnesota Twins baseball cap which has a subdued enough logo as to
not look out of place while he walks the dog) and Wisconsin Badgers
socks (which my mother makes sure he wears). It started with an
Illinois magnet bought for some over-inflated price in O'Hare
International Airport, Chicago. It now includes magnets from three
states, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin, from a city, Madison,
magnets extolling the virtues of the Packers fans and the Wisconsin
Badgers and at least one cow based magnet from Madison's World Dairy
Expo.

So
with primary aim of finding another fridge magnet for my darling
mama, we decided to head west from Illinois, cross the mighty
Mississippi and enter the great state of Iowa.

As
I have just said, Iowa lies due west from southern Wisconsin and a
good portion of northern and central Illinois. It is named (according
to Wikipedia) after the Ioway people, a native American tribe. Not
that such a naming is unusual for the Mid-West. Its not really
something people from outside the U.S. consider that much but did you really
think Chicago was a European word?

If you took a quick drive around the Mid-West or simply opened an atlas of the
area (or Google Maps if you're in a rush), you will find a curious
mix of Anglo Saxon/English place names like, Rockford, Springfield, Spring
Green, Dodgeville, Green Bay, multiple towns with the prefix “Fort”,
Madison, Mineral Point, St Paul and Native American names like
Menominee Falls, Waunakee, Manitowoc, Waukesha, Monona, Winona,
Wabasha, Ho-Chunk, Winnebago (and you thought that was just a big
camper van) Chippewa Falls even the state names, Minnesota,
Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, are renderings of Native American names. The pronunciation of these names coming
exceptionally easy to a very British guy from North Lincolnshire.
(Mrs Geekrant coaches me through the difficult ones)

And
on top of that, there is one other culture influencing place names
around the Midwest, The French.

The
Mississippi: Voyageurs, Steamboats and Legends

It is fair to say that most
people in the western world are aware that the French were a major
colonial power and that they had a great influence on the modern day
nation of Canada, but what I was surprised to discover was how much
they affected the growth and development of this part of the U.S.

The French were the first
Europeans to explore this region, as “voyageurs”, part explorer,
part hunter, part trader, part salesman, they came down from Canada
looking for furs and then later the Jesuits followed, looking for
souls to save. They discovered the Mississippi and used it as a kind
of aquatic autobahn to open up the interior of the North American
continent, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Their influence can be
seen far beyond their original sphere of influence down the whole
length of the river. Names like Lacrosse, Prairie Du Chien, St Louis,
Baton Rouge and, of course, New Orleans. These cities became the
centres for trade and, eventually, settlement in the area. A whole
region defined by the Mississippi.

In this part of the United
States, the mighty Mississippi is still essential to trade, industry
and commerce. It forms borders between states including the eastern
border of Iowa. So when we went looking for a fridge magnet for my
mother, we didn't actually go that far into Iowa and by not that far
I mean barely a mile. We bravely crossed the Mississippi on one
bridge from Illinois and then equally bravely retreated across it
once again via another bridge two hundred yards upstream away into
Wisconsin. And for the five hours where we weren't nobly traversing
waterways we stayed in Dubuque, Iowa.

Dubuque was, by far, the most
populated town we visited or travelled through that weekend. 58,000
or so people call this riverside settlement home. However, when we
arrived, it was quiet, the traffic sparse this early on a Sunday. I was
struck, not for the first time since moving here, by the amount of
space that Midwestern towns seem to possess. No dense urban sprawl
here, the buildings clinging together as if desperately fighting each
other for a place in the sun. Instead, a wide and expansive sight
greets the eyes, land is not exactly in short supply out here and
everything feels somehow larger than back home, more open and airy.
Here it seems, the dream that is the American heartland feels only
limited by its own horizon.

We
ate breakfast in a bustling cafe/restaurant/diner favoured, it
seemed, by the locals. This, it appeared, was where the entire
population of Dubuque had disappeared to. A local school sports coach,
while in the action of leaving the building, paused for a moment to greet a
potential new recruit, families came in and took up tables, 8 or 9 people at a
time. Going out for breakfast is far more common here than back home.
It has a ritual to it, the orders given and taken in a practiced
shorthand as unique to the Americans as drunken demands for a spicy
vindaloo in a curry house at 10 at night on a night out in Bradford,
West Yorkshire, are to the British. It feels like family. If Ma and
Pa Walton and their large brood where around today, this sort of
place is where they would breakfast, all of them, including Jim Bob.

After
eating, we drove into the Port of Dubuque. This was, and is, a river
port. A way-marker on the meandering Mississippi. It reminded me of
Grimsby, back home, or Hull, possibly. Only its at least 1,000 miles
to the sea and there's no decent fish and chips for 4,000 miles. In
the middle of the redeveloped area of the Port is the National
Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium.

This,
funnily enough, for a history geek like me, was the first large
scale, purpose built, Museum I had been to in the U.S. It is split
into two parts, an Aquarium with multiple marine habitats displayed,
representing much of the Mississippi's eco-system. Otters, sturgeons,
snakes, turtles, all swam through recreated roots of submerged trees
or basked on rocks in sunlight filtered through large windows. In a
water lab area, both the sturgeons and also crayfish, could be
touched and an alligator stared languidly out from its enclosure. Mrs
Geekrant, gesticulating wildly at a catfish that appeared to be the
size of a small automobile, intimated to me that this creature and
others of its ilk were one of the main reasons she is never going in
the Mississippi again despite being born only five minutes away from
its shores. I would have told her to get over it but for two very
important reasons.

I
want to carry on breathing

My
sister has a Fiat 500 that I'm certain was smaller than that beast.

The
other main building houses a museum dedicated to telling the story of
this big, old, river. Prehistory, Native Americans, Voyageurs,
Steamboats. River conservation, the affects of dams on water levels.
Outside an old, steam powered, river dredger sleeps at anchor. Its
day long gone.

Across
from this riverboat sits a riverboat pilot, or at the very least, the
sculpture of one. Silently he sits on a bench, gazing out to the
river that defined his life and his words (actually he's reading a book but give me some poetic license). His name is Samuel
Langhorne Clemens, or Mark Twain, as he is better known.

I
remember, as a child, reading how Clemens took his pen-name from a
phrase used by riverboat pilots on the Mississippi when measuring
depth, Mark Twain denoting a depth of two fathoms. The Mississippi
seemed so far away from me then, unreal and dreamlike, a legend on
the edge of stories.

So
I sat on the bench next to Mark Twain and imagined the great river
winding its way down from its beginning somewhere in Minnesota, past
the village my in-laws live in, over dams and through locks, touching
a multitude of lives until it reaches the sea. And in my mind's eye,
I picture all the generations before me who have used it. Proud
Native warriors crossing the river to get home, Voyageurs, trading
their way into the annals of history and the fabric of the land, Mark
Twain, piloting his riverboat into literary fame.

And
faced with all of this, who am I? It has been a long journey to get
here, a long years wait to be with my beloved, waiting for
bureaucracy to work itself out. Many months trying to understand the
new world I find myself in, the people, the weather, the endless
commercials for medical treatments on network television, the House
on the Hill.

Who am I? Is part of my identity now bound up with all
the other immigrants and settlers who have found their way here. Is
my previous self upstream, never to be returned to and my future self
downstream at the sea. I can not say. So, until I can answer that question, its just Mark Twain, my wife
and I and that is all I need for now.

(The list of place names in this blog-post is, by necessity, incomplete and overly weighed in the favour of Wisconsin and Minnesota. This is because I have only really seen this small part of the Mid-West so far. But I'm always willing to learn new place names and have my pronunciation of said place names laughed at.)

(Photo credit for this blog has to go to my mother and her skill with a smart phone camera.)